


Dirty Floor

by nextdoorneighbor



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Depression, Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Internal Monologue, Jaehyun is the best human to ever exist while Ten is just broken, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Sexual Content, Slice of Life, Suicidal Thoughts, look who's self-projecting once again, suicide is kinda in a big role but no one dies, ten-centric, there's no real closure for anything, this is probs real triggering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-15
Updated: 2018-06-15
Packaged: 2019-05-23 19:12:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14940221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nextdoorneighbor/pseuds/nextdoorneighbor
Summary: There is past and there is future, but we are right here, right now, and I promise we'll get through this if you just promise to stay with me.





	Dirty Floor

**Author's Note:**

> The Jaeten tag is fucking dead and this is what I'm gonna give you? Haha sorry. 
> 
> Big warnings for everything really, this is super depressing since I kinda wrote it with how my own mood went. There's a lot of sex considering that I wrote it lol but at the same time if you're here only for that then I suggest you turn around bc that's not what you're gonna get. It's not super explicit and I wouldn't consider it smut, but just as a warning?
> 
> Anyway this is me 100% self-projecting. There's really no story and I wrote this to cope. It's not gonna make sense to you if you've never been abused nor have battled with a mental illness. Also please don't read it if you get easily triggered by what's in the tags, I don't want to hurt anyone with my own bs.

He likes the sun shining so it hits his face. A smile. Warmth. 

These kind of things are what you stay alive for. 

The front door clicks and then Jaehyun is stumbling in. Ten knows that he must be clad in a suit again, looking so very professional, but his hair is always a mess. Always.

“Hey, babe,” he hears his warm, honey-like voice, heels of his dress shoes clapping pleasantly against the parquet. He can’t see Jaehyun but he knows that he is loosening his tie, shoulder bag hitting the floor as he drops it, walks closer. “You’re laying on the floor again,” he points out, but Ten doesn’t hear it, ears focusing on the melody of his voice. Bad habit, he hates it himself, but hasn’t been able to get rid of it yet; like a lot of other things. 

Ten hums, the pace of Jaehyun’s steps evening to nothing when he gets close enough. 

“Join me.”

“Everything okay?” 

Jaehyun dismisses his request like he hadn’t even said anything, but that’s fine. He knows that Jaehyun is worried again, like he is every time Ten is like this. So, a lot of the time. Jaehyun is the worried type as Ten is the type that worries him. 

Ten smiles wide so his teeth show, cracks his eyes open to see Jaehyun looking down at him. 

Yeah. His hair is a mess again. 

“Ten.”

He loves those damn dimples. He loves this idiot. 

“I’m okay, worrywart,” he hums, lets his eyes fall shut, doesn’t get rid of the smile. The breeze comes in through the open balcony doors, the light curtains blowing into action in midair. “It’s just nice here.”

Jaehyun walks off, into the kitchen. Ten loves how small their apartment is, everything so close together. He loves the soft colors and all the potted plants, loves the little balcony and city noises. Summer and greenery. 

There’s a click of a camera shutter, that oh so familiar sound. Ten loves taking photos, and so does Jaehyun, of Ten precisely. 

He smiles wider, mind painting a portrait of what the picture might look like on the backs of his eyelids, seeing himself on the floor, surrounded by different sized plants and the sunlight warming it up. A car honks somewhere down the street, and Ten swears he is going to remember this moment forever. 

“Gimme,” he says, stretching his arms up in the air. Despite the harshness of the simple word, they both know that Ten is asking more than commanding. He always is, but that’s the thing, both Jaehyun and his therapist say to be selfish once in a while, even if they probably didn’t mean to drop his manners. Anyways, it’s hard to adapt to, but Jaehyun seems to be happy with anything, even if it’s just leaving out the ‘please’ from the end of the sentence. 

He opens his eyes just when Jaehyun places the camera in his palms, loves the soft smile on his face. He has rid of his suit jacket at some point, probably when he fetched the camera from the kitchen. 

“How long have you been on the floor?”

Jaehyun looks nice through the lens. He has got his hands in his front pockets of the sleek, dark blue dress pants, tie hanging, leaned a tad forward. The sun doesn’t reach his face, the shadow of the window frame drawing a wobbly line over his chest. He looks sleepy, dreamy, eyes looking out, the image having nothing else to it but Jaehyun up from mid thigh and the part where wall becomes ceiling, or is it the other way around. Ten can’t even remember the name of that part.

The camera shutter goes off again and the next thing Ten sees through the lens is Jaehyun looking down at him, wearing that lopsided smile of his. 

“You’re completely in your own world again,” he says, eyes flashing with something. Ten takes another picture. 

“Come down here,” he says, lifts the camera a little to look through the photos. Jaehyun sighs. 

“Ten,” he whispers now, and there’s a pang to Ten’s chest of what if he is being difficult, what if, Jaehyun is annoyed with him. What if Jaehyun dislikes him. “The floor’s dirty,” he continues, soft. Ten lowers the camera and looks up to him. 

Their smiles are gone. 

He was in his own world again, he wasn’t listening. He was having a good time and now he ruined everything. The floor is dirty. 

“I’m sorry.”

Jaehyun’s eyes widen, lips part. 

The realization is quick and Ten feels worse. Jaehyun starts on mumbling ‘I’m sorry’s and ‘no’s without a pause. His knees hit the floor and it’s dirty and Ten freezes up. Why is Jaehyun concerned about him when all he deserves is spit to his face and a kick in the ribs. 

“The floor’s dirty,” Ten reminds him, worrying about Jaehyun’s pants that now will have to be washed again. _Just_ because of him. 

“That’s okay,” Jaehyun assures but Ten questions his own importance. “It doesn’t matter, okay? I didn’t mean it like that, baby, I didn’t…” Jaehyun’s hand had come to the side of his face and the other had snaked under his shoulders. He lifts him up with ease. 

_The floor is dirty and so are you._

Ten presses his eyes shut and gulps, lets Jaehyun pull himself to his chest. The noon sun comforts him, too. 

“I’m sorry.”

“There’s nothing to apologize for,” he mumbles between the pecks he places, holding Ten close. “I love you so much, do you know that? You’re irreplaceable, okay?” There is much more but Ten shuts it out, just listening to the melody. 

He loves Jaehyun’s voice. 

He loves Jaehyun’s mouth. 

“Ah…”

Jaehyun’s lips on his neck, clavicle, hands roaming up his torso. 

The sun is setting now, hours later. Ten doesn’t remember exactly when Jaehyun had brought him to the comfort of the bed. The bedroom is on the other side of the apartment, dim with how the sun is not there. 

There’s a moan against where his heart thumps just centimeters under, and another little noise escapes Ten’s mouth. A stuttered breath and lips sucking at his hardened nipple. Ten flushes and bites down on the inside of his cheek, fingers gripping to the pillow under his head. 

Ten’s eyes water when Jaehyun takes him into his mouth and mewls when he hits the back of his throat. His hands come to grip Jaehyun’s hair, leg flinging over Jaehyun’s shoulder, and his mind can’t focus on anything else but pleasure.

“I don’t deserve you,” he mumbles between languid kisses, tasting himself in Jaehyun’s mouth, half naked and body tired despite doing nothing the whole day. Jaehyun encloses him within his arms.

“I’ll let you in on a secret,” responds Jaehyun, low against his ear. It tickles. Ten screeches. “You deserve everything, you deserve the whole wide world,” he tells. Ten can’t help from smiling and Jaehyun won’t stop from kissing him. “You deserve the moon and the stars and I’d get them for you if I could.”

“You sound like a fool.”

“Because I am,” Jaehyun says, hand on top cupping Ten’s cheek as he looks into his eyes. “A fool who is completely and utterly in love with you.”

 _He doesn’t,_ says Ten’s mind, _he is just being nice._ But Ten shuts it out, lets himself to be submerged into Jaehyun’s eyes. 

The morning comes with a sunrise at eleven over four. 

They are a complete mess of limbs, but still the first thought that surfaces is that today it has been a month since. 

Since. 

He gets up, makes coffee, slides the glass door open to the tiny balcony and sits so his feet hang over nothing. The columns holding the railing up press against his thighs where he has crammed his legs through. A dog barks and the sun keeps rising. Ten’s stomach lurches. 

He remembers the agony, the hurt. Remembers how he was still happier than in a long time. 

“Ten.” Jaehyun’s voice is hoarse with sleep, steps heavy. Ten doesn’t look back. “The hell are you doing up?”

“It’s been a month,” he easily provides. Jaehyun slumps against his back. Ten presses his forehead against the same bars his legs are hanging through. A car drives the road under them, someone has their laundry drying on their own balcony across the street, one and a half stories lower than they are now. 

“What? A mo–” 

He quiets like been hit, arms snaking around Ten’s waist as he realizes. His grip is tight. 

“Oh.”

It falls like a stone on moss; doesn’t hurt but leaves a mark. Ten is used to marks, and this one heals quickly. 

“Are you okay?” 

“Yes.” 

It is being said far too formally and far too quickly to be true. They both know that it isn’t, but Ten can’t answer that question with anything else. He has always been okay with _everything._

“I’m here for you, okay?” Jaehyun’s breath is hot against his nape, and Ten knows that he is already more affected by it all than Ten is ever going to be. “I’m always going to be here for you.” He kisses his hairline and then his shoulder, but Ten really can’t think of much else. 

He hates how good Jaehyun makes him feel. He hates how he makes him feel like he is worth something and how he treats him like he isn’t a liability. He hates it because he doesn’t deserve it. At least the one before Jaehyun made sure he knew his worth. The worth he doesn’t have. 

It all comes back this beautiful Saturday morning, thinking about the night a month ago. 

Jaehyun brings himself and him coffee from the kitchen, sits as Ten does. 

Ten hates that he is worried. 

“What are you thinking about?”

Ten doesn’t tune him out this time. He just won’t answer. 

_Would jumping this far down kill me or just injure me?_ He is pretty sure Jaehyun doesn’t want to know what goes through his mind. _Hitting the ground just right could do it._

“The weather is really nice. We should do something rather than stay indoors,” Jaehyun states. He has long known not to wait for Ten’s answer if he doesn’t say anything in half a minute’s time. He is just not going to answer. “Downtown sound good?” Ten would never decide for Jaehyun nor anyone. He doesn’t want to ruin anything. 

The morning wind blows and makes goosebumps appear. The coffee burns his tongue and Jaehyun’s fingers trace over his skin.

“You want to jump,” there is in the wind, and it’s absurd for Jaehyun to say it so boldly, he has never been strong with these kinds of things. It takes Ten a second to even realize that he had said it, for the reason, because he didn’t think Jaehyun had it in him. 

Jaehyun leans his head on his shoulder, lips pressing half over his skin and half on the strap of his top. Ten looks down at him, his disheveled hair brushing everywhere, tickling. Jaehyun takes his hand and the other appears from the other side of Ten, landing softly over his hip. 

“Please don’t,” he continues, voice so small, fingers fiddling. “I need you to stay.”

He doesn’t need Ten, really doesn’t, and he knows that. He is holding Jaehyun back. 

“Please stay.”

“I will till my dying day, love,” Ten tells him, smiles. He would hope for Jaehyun to not pick up on what he said, but that was unrealistic from the start. 

“Don’t say that, just…” Jaehyun lifts his head, looks deep in his eyes. “Don’t.” He pulls him closer the best he can. 

“What do you want me to say then?” 

Ten loves Jaehyun’s eyes, his smile, his mind.

“Promise me to stay till the day I’ll present you with the moon and the stars and the whole wide world,” he asks of him, childish, and Ten can’t stop the smile. Foreheads bump. Coffee flavored kisses press on his cheek. Jaehyun can be such a romantic.

“You know I can’t do that,” he whispers, smiling still, and Jaehyun stops, pushes his face against Ten’s lovingly. 

“Then promise me to stay until tomorrow.” 

The pecks resume and Ten laughs. 

“What?” 

“Promise me,” he says again, quiet against his jaw, and Ten thinks it’s stupid. What does it help when tomorrow again he will be able to do anything he wants. “Promise me.”

“I promise to stay until tomorrow,” Ten confirms with a giggle, Jaehyun’s hands roaming over his stomach and under his shirt. The coffee gets cold and Ten can’t but go red with love, summer breeze coming trough and the sun rising. 

They end up not leaving the apartment even if they were supposed to, Jaehyun saw it better to stay because he thought Ten would want to, claiming that he is like an open book. Ten really wouldn’t have minded going out, but it doesn’t really matter at the end of the day. Curling up with Jaehyun on the sofa really is a great way to spend the day anyways. 

The day turns and the night falls and Ten forgets to be affected. There are good days like that. 

Jaehyun resumes with the promise the next day. 

“Promise to stay until tomorrow,” he whispers and Ten grins. He gulps down his daily pill and flings his arms over Jaehyun’s shoulders, pressing a wet kiss square onto his lips. 

He promises, and Jaehyun presses him against the kitchen counter, radio screaming and the smell of fresh baked bread travels all the way from the bakery down the street. He knows that Jaehyun is going to ask tomorrow again, and then the day after tomorrow, and so on. 

Monday is a good day, too, Ten gets work done, a commission that has been sitting in his drawer for a week and a half. 

He is huddled up in front of his computer monitor in the dark room after getting the piece done and sending it over to the client, but he feels like drawing more still. So, he opens a new folder and stares at a white canvas for a few seconds before starting on something he has yet to find out what it is. 

He had even gotten out of bed at a reasonable hour, so there is still time before Jaehyun comes home. It’s nice to draw something for himself again, it has been a while since the last time, he thinks, forming basic shapes over the space.

His client showers him with compliments and gratitude when they see their piece, making Ten extremely proud and happy, even confident, for good fifteen minutes, having his motivation peak.

And being so immensely happy that he is this Monday afternoon, he draws what would make him even happier. Ten draws death. 

“Hey,” Jaehyun sounds surprised finding him inspecting the finished piece on the screen, saved and done. Jaehyun drapes over him still sitting in his chair, taking in what is on the screen. They both smile, Ten’s as genuine as it can be. “Babe, this looks amazing,” Jaehyun praises, fingers searching over his old hoodie innocently – even if it’s anything but. 

“Yeah?” Ten finds his voice just a tad breathy, and he can tell how proud Jaehyun feels. He wonders if he still would if he knew what the piece has in it. 

“It’s so pretty,” Jaehyun compliments, fingers slipping between his thighs, irritating him, flicking a switch he knows Jaehyun was looking for. “What is it about?”

Ten misses a beat. He knew Jaehyun would ask, his art is abstract and the other can’t understand it often, still finding it beautiful and making sure Ten knows that he does. It’s endearing and amusing at the same time. 

“Relief,” he breathes out, meeting Jaehyun’s eyes; dark like his, Ten knows that Jaehyun has been thinking about him on his way home, knows that Jaehyun gets a little impatient sometimes. He knows that Jaehyun knows that Ten is feeling good and he knows that that riles him up more. Jaehyun’s fingers move closer to his crotch and Ten lets out a breathy laugh. 

“The colors are kinda dark for relief, though,” Jaehyun observes, but his eyes tell that he isn’t even concerned with the picture anymore. He hums and Ten mumbles a hurried ‘shut the fuck up’ while pressing their mouths together. 

He loves when Jaehyun gets like this. 

He draws shapes over Jaehyun’s bare chest after cleaning up. He wonders if the other is going to fall asleep like this; he looks like it, breathing evened out and tension off his shoulders. It’s great to have him unwind after a long day at work. 

“Was I too rough?” 

It just slips, knows that he might be worrying more than he should. Jaehyun’s eyes crack open, pupils dilated. 

“You’ve been ‘lot rougher than that,” Jaehyun claims with a small smile, but drops it with how worry still laces in Ten’s eyes. He pulls him closer, smooths his palm over the curve of Ten’s scarred back. “You did me so good, babe,” he voices out, humming, and a shiver runs through Ten. He leans down to kiss him, soft, Jaehyun’s fingers tracing again. 

That night Ten starts on a third drawing, staring at his monitor like there is nothing else to life. 

Jaehyun tries to drag him into bed on several occasions, before he goes to brush his teeth and after, when he puts his phone down and trying to sleep, not talking about how he whines every ten minutes to ‘just come here and pick up on where you left off tomorrow’. But Ten doesn’t budge, knowing that if he doesn’t finish the drawing now, he will never, that’s just how it goes. 

Jaehyun quiets somewhere around eleven, falling asleep with him still working, but that is fine. Ten’s body aches with how he has spent the whole day like this–save for the, uh, exercising session–and has been ready for bed ever since he started. 

The finished drawing is not something ordinary of him; Ten doesn’t know if he hates it or loves it. It’s Jaehyun, but it’s not, it’s sunshine and potted plants and coffee. It’s love and it is sex and other deep emotions like those, and Ten does not know how he ended up with such a positive piece of art. He stares at it for the next one and a half hours–of course not planning on inspecting it for that long, because he is exhausted and he should be sleeping–occasionally adding a line or fixing another, but at the end of it, it is three in the morning or maybe closer to four, and he closes off the computer and steers over to the bed, falling asleep the second his head hits the pillow. 

He stirs awake when Jaehyun is getting up, at half seven, lifting his head up himself even if Jaehyun is protesting, telling him to go back to sleep. They drink their morning coffee at the kitchen table and Jaehyun puts up quieted questions about his night, how long he was awake for and if he got the piece done, all the while drawing circles on his palm. 

Ten helps Jaehyun dress up even if he is fully capable to do it himself, and sees him out of the door like the good boyfriend he is, after which he boots up his computer and opens up the most recent file. 

He stares at his creation for good five minutes, decides that it is probably the most perfect thing he has ever created, drags the mouse over the screen to a drop-down menu at the top corner, and deletes the file without a second thought. Then he goes back to the bed, buries himself into the cooled down sheets, and lets himself sleep again.

The next time he wakes up is when the pointers of the alarm clock are threateningly close to two at noon, and he takes the next hour to get up from the bottom of the bed. He feels even more exhausted than he did twelve hours ago, but that is only due to the extra sleep. 

Getting up, he opens the computer once again, limbs feeling to be asleep still. An empty canvas always fills up, either for seven minutes or forty-eight, but it all ends up in the ‘clear all layers’ button time and time again. The muscles in his fingers hurt and his eyes feel dry, and he… he feels completely used. 

Ten wants to cry. 

He really does, but it wouldn’t happen even if he tried. It is just him, in the quiet of their apartment, staring into nothing for being too tired of moving his gaze. He is too tired of breathing, and he feels as a deep circling abyss forms inside of him. 

_You really are worth of nothing._

He sets his pen down, somehow gets up from his chair. 

_Why does it feel like this again?_

He descends down before the balcony doors, doesn’t open them but lays down. It’s his spot. 

He just wants to die. Is he allowed to think so? Is he allowed anything at all? Jaehyun says that he is, but really Jaehyun is just a projection of his mind, a mere piece of his overtaking paranoia of what if he is actually just losing his mind. What if none of it ever happened and Jaehyun never found him or helped him escape?

Can he even call it escaping?

She has such a strong grip on him still. He hasn’t seen her in a year. But what if he is just making it all up and he is still in their home, laying on the cold floor behind the couch where no one can see his decaying form. 

_”Stay here and don’t move before I’m back.”_

Ten can still hear her voice. Ten can still feel her touch. 

“Ten, please get off the floor,” whines Jaehyun hours later. “I’ve told you that you don’t have to do that anymore.”

Ten thinks that it must be how he says the words. It is definitely a melody. He wishes this is the last sound he hears before he dies. 

“What happened, baby?”

Ten remembers when they moved in together, remembers how Jaehyun always picked him up from the floor like a feather and carried him back to bed several times a night. He remembers wriggling in his hold for the floor is all he really ever deserved, because there was no balcony or backyard to sleep at. 

_The floor is dirty and so are you._

Ten wishes Jaehyun would remind him of the fact, because he feels like he has forgotten. He is happier than he ever deserved to be, and Jaehyun really isn’t helping. He feels – no, is guilty of leaving her when she knew how he needed to be treated. She really made him feel the only way he needs to feel. Despicable.

“Baby, you’re thinking too much about it again,” surfaces Jaehyun’s melody, but Ten doesn’t bother opening his eyes or do much of a move to even indicate that he indeed is awake. He really isn’t sure if he even can. He doesn’t want to. He only really wants to stop from breathing. 

Jaehyun, like he always does, picks him up, maneuvers them on the couch and Ten won’t try to stop him, energy-levels as much as zero. Jaehyun is so warm, he is at all times, Ten feels like, like he is cold as packed ice as the opposite, even if it's summer and Jaehyun is only wearing a thin layer where Ten could be as well living in late autumn. 

City lights and night breeze. Clouded sky and awoken buildings. 

Someone is dancing, other drinking vodka from the bottle, and the third is crying heartbreak at the entrance of a club. 

Ten jolts when a corner of a quilt drapes around his shoulder. A warm body drops down onto the concrete balcony flooring beside him. 

“You know what?” 

Jaehyun’s voice is honey – fuck that, it’s porn if you ask Ten. Straight up porn. Yup. 

“I prefer you not freezing your ass off out here cuz I hate when you’re sick cuz then I can’t make out with you.”

“You sound drunk,” is Ten’s answer. “You are slurring and that sentence was one disgusting bundle of shallow thoughts and spelling mistakes.” Someone screams somewhere a few blocks away and Ten feels like hitting his head. “Also you’d make out with me anyways.”

Jaehyun hums, leans his upper arm against Ten’s, their eyes up in front. “Drunk on hot chocolate,” he mumbles, lifts a mug from his other side, takes a gulp, and hands it to Ten. “Also why’d you comment on my shallow thoughts and then proceed to continuing on the matter? It doesn’t make sense. And you better not tell me that you only ever have deep thoughts or something.”

This is it. This is the kind of thing Ten enjoys. He isn’t really restricted by anything, he just doesn’t give a shit. What the fuck ever, he feels like pinning Jaehyun against the balcony and fuck him senseless. Let the city hear him cry out his name.

Ten wraps his arm around Jaehyun, them cuddled against each other under the quilt, feeling safe from the big bad world around them. 

They talk, detached from a real subject, with irrational pauses and gaps between answers and own words. There’s really nothing to it, they are both tired, Ten knows that Jaehyun must be tired of him, of the swings of his moods and how he just doesn’t know how to function like a normal human being. Then again, Jaehyun always says that it’s problematic to say a human being can be ‘normal’ because who defines than anyways. No matter, Ten will still always be different from how a healthy person works, no matter how everyone around him–Jaehyun and his therapist–tells him he can get better. 

The conversation eventually drifts into closed eyes and connected lips. A new flame spawns to warm them up, backs leaned against the glass behind them and Ten’s hand pulling loose the knot of Jaehyun’s shorts while the other groans into his mouth. 

At the same time it’s all he wants and the best he can do. He wants to give back to Jaehyun for all he has done and for still being here, but it is also the selfish greed to pull him into tiny shreds with a few strokes of his hand. He enjoys Jaehyun like this. 

Muscles clenching and unclenching, his desperation showing in every part of him, eyes painting with the sky full of stars that is, for tonight, covered by cotton blanket. His lips latch under Ten’s jaw just before he gets his relief, moaning and sucking, body shivering to add to the effect it all has on Ten. 

Ten is as mindful as wiping his hand to Jaehyun’s shorts, slumping more comfortably against the other as he keeps marking his neck as if painting it over with the only purple paint he has. 

Jaehyun’s breathing is as heavy as his head on Ten’s shoulder, and eventually Ten gets the thought of when will he be losing all this good that has been going for him. When and how will he lose Jaehyun?

His eyes glaze over and Jaehyun’s arms grip tighter around him. 

“I love you so much,” Jaehyun mumbles, half asleep on the cold balcony. “What would I ever do without you?”

It’s the bliss he is feeling, the fatigue. He isn’t thinking straight. 

All Ten can think of is that he wants to be gone before he loses Jaehyun. 

Wednesday morning he is convinced that he isn’t even supposed to get up from the bed. 

Jaehyun brings him coffee and his pill, hugs him tight against himself to reach every patch of untouched skin with his lips. Ten feels so out of it. There is no reason to go on. There is nothing that can give him energy to do anything at all. 

“Do you promise to stay with me until tomorrow?”

It must be at least the fifth time Jaehyun has asked him that this morning. It’s not that Ten would have the willpower to even try and do something to himself, it’s just that he doesn’t want to exist anymore. 

No more. And Jaehyun is shaking like a leaf. 

So he calls in sick and stays home with Ten. He can hear Jaehyun calling his therapist in the other room, arranging a meeting sooner than it was originally supposed to be. Jaehyun doesn’t say a date out loud, not even a time of day, Ten can only hear him agreeing to what he hears through the line. 

After that, Jaehyun emerges with the bag he always brings to work and a goofy smile on his face. 

He sets up a temporary working-station on the bed next to Ten’s feet, and that’s that. Ten doesn’t want to bother him, responding to emails and writing page after another of endless reports. He doesn’t even keep his eyes open, trying to not think too much. 

It’s not like Jaehyun hasn’t done this before, no, some days just are so he isn’t required to actually go to work because he can do all of it from home, so it isn’t a rare occurrence. His fingertips nibble at Ten’s hand mindlessly and his toes move in a rhythm only heard in his head. 

There is a bathroom break or a two before Ten hears him shut the lid of his laptop, soon feeling Jaehyun press down close to him on the bed. There’s talk about food and if he should order something, and all Ten needs to do is nod or shake his head. 

He hates himself for putting it all on Jaehyun. 

He hates being so weak. 

So, he forces himself to sit up when the food comes and he forces it down his own throat, and even if it’s a stretch and a wholly unpleasant thing to do in this mindset, Jaehyun still smiles so sincerely, like seeing Ten eat really is that amazing. He just doesn’t understand why Jaehyun puts so much time and effort into him. 

Some time after being done, Jaehyun helps him put some clothes on, whispering about how his therapist had a gap in their schedule today for someone had canceled their own time earlier. 

Even with some food in his stomach, it is exhausting, living, being. Jaehyun almost needs to hold him up, even if he is trying his best. 

It keeps surprising him that there was a time it wasn’t like this, there was a time when he had a job he went to every day and several relationships to uphold. It was a rough time but he still somehow pulled through, so it makes himself feel even weaker; if he was now put into that situation, he wouldn’t be able to last a day. How in the hell did he keep that smile, real or not, on his face all that time? His conditions are so much better, but he is deteriorating even worse. No one is putting him down, but his mental health is in million little pieces anyways. 

His therapist claims that his medication isn’t working. It’s the third one he is testing out. Yeah, it is not supposed to make him feel alive or anything, but they are going on about how it is supposed to make Ten want to do something with his life again, and that isn’t apparently actualizing. So. There will be all those damn abstinence symptoms or whatever. Ten doesn’t really have the energy for any of that again. 

Jaehyun holds his hand and kisses his head, tells him that it is going to be okay again. “You remember a few days ago you were happy,” he would say, hug Ten closer, “it’s gonna be like that again.”

He drives them around the city, stops to buy some coffee, has the radio playing some hits from the eighties. Ten just sits and stays quiet, but he knows Jaehyun isn’t expecting anything of him anyways. 

Arriving home, Jaehyun seems to have everything figured out already, asking Ten if he wants to watch a movie and after getting a nod of his head, he leaves him on the couch to make some popcorn and get some soft drinks. 

It calms him to lay on top of Jaehyun, have his heart beat right into his ear, arms around him and hands petting, buried in blankets. 

Yes, Jaehyun makes it bearable. No, Jaehyun is not the cure and no, Jaehyun can’t take it away. No, Ten will never take his help for granted. But because of Jaehyun, Ten is still here.

**Author's Note:**

> To clear at least something up that might have not been that clear, I quote from the comments: _who is she?_
> 
>  
> 
> _She... Well, there are a few things with this story I bring up but never really adress better or bring up and explain. Those are also the things I wrote this fic for in the first place. She is Ten's abuser from the past, and that is pretty much all that I want you to know about her. She is haunting him still even after a year of being apart._
> 
>  
> 
> But hey I know that the whole thing sucks and doesn't have a proper ending or really any storyline but pls leave a comment I'm lonely


End file.
